Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that the Justice Department would support a recent motion filed by minority-rights groups, asking a panel of federal judges in San Antonio to place Texas back under preclearance for 10 more years — requiring federal approval for any changes to voting laws.

Based on evidence of intentional racial discrimination in a redistricting case last year, Holder, in prepared remarks, said the “state of Texas should be required to go through a preclearance process whenever it changes its voting laws and practices.”

The decision by the Justice Department comes after the Supreme Court last month struck down a provision in the Voting Rights Act that made the preclearance provision unenforceable.

The decision instructed Congress to develop new formulas to determine which states must seek prior federal approval of changes to voting laws and procedures.

Texas was one of nine mostly southern states that had been forced to seek prior approval to changes because of a history of past discrimination.

After the Supreme Court decision, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced that the state would implement a new voter ID law that had been found to be discriminatory to minorities by the three-judge panel in Washington.

The state's redistricting maps are also being challenged by minority rights groups in a federal court in San Antonio under another provision of the Voting Rights Act over intentional discrimination in drawing new political lines.

“Once again, the Obama administration is demonstrating utter contempt for our country's system of checks and balances, not to mention the U.S. Constitution,” Perry said. “This end-run around the Supreme Court undermines the will of the people of Texas, and casts unfair aspersions on our state's common-sense efforts to preserve the integrity of our elections process.”

“By first going around the voters and now the Supreme Court, Attorney General Holder and President Obama's intentions are readily transparent. This decision has nothing to do with protecting voting rights and everything to do with advancing a partisan political agenda,” Cornyn said.

“Today's decision by the Department of Justice upholds the rights of all Texans to cast their vote freely. This decision also gives Congress time to come to a consensus over how to move forward and ensure that no American is subject to the narrow and discriminatory agenda of partisan politicians,” Castro said in a statement.

Also praising Holder's decision was NAACP Texas State Conference President Gary Bledsoe.

“We are simply ecstatic that the attorney general has decided to join us in a continuing effort to thwart the implementation of a discriminatory redistricting map,” Bledsoe said in a statement. “In the 1960s it was necessary for the United States to come to the aid or minorities in Texas, and sadly it is still necessary."